2019-02-22T15:07:53ZPsychosocial interventions for community dwelling people following diagnosis of mild to moderate dementia. Findings of a systematic scoping reviewhttp://hdl.handle.net/10454/16795
Keogh F, Mountain G, Joddrell P et al (2018) Psychosocial interventions for community dwelling people following diagnosis of mild to moderate dementia. Findings of a systematic scoping review. The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. Accepted for Publication.
National policies and evidence reviews recommend psychosocial interventions (PIs) as an essential support, particularly in the period following dementia diagnosis. However, the availability and uptake of these interventions is comparatively low. One of the reasons for this is that clinicians lack information about what might be provided and the potential benefits of different interventions. This paper identifies and describes psychosocial interventions for community dwelling people following diagnosis of mild to moderate dementia and presents the available evidence to inform practice decisions. A systematic scoping review was employed to map the evidence relating to PIs for this group. This identified 63 relevant studies, testing 69 interventions, which could be grouped into six categories; 20 cognition-oriented interventions; 11 behaviour-oriented; 11 stimulation-oriented; 13 emotion-oriented, 5 social-oriented and 9 multi-modal. There were three targets for outcome measurement of these PIs; the person with dementia, the family carer and the person-carer dyad. Over 154 outcome measures were identified in the studies with outcomes measured across 11 main domains. The lack of a classification framework for PIs means it is difficult to create a meaningful synthesis of the breadth of relevant evidence to guide clinical practice. Possible dimensions of a classification framework are proposed to begin to address this gap.
2018-01-01T00:00:00ZPreference of non-pharmaceutical preoperative anxiety reduction intervention in patients undergoing elective surgeryhttp://hdl.handle.net/10454/16790
Dagona S, Archibong U and McClelland GT (2018) Preference of non-pharmaceutical preoperative anxiety reduction intervention in patients undergoing elective surgery. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal. 5(12): 311-323.
For patients to be treated, decisions about their care must be made before treatment begins. In case of pre-operative anxiety, it is currently unknown how clinicians and patients discuss information about the issue, and it is also not known whether clinicians consider (or are ready to consider) their patients’ preferences of non-pharmaceutical pre-operative anxiety reduction interventions. At present no study has been conducted to find information on surgical patients’ preferences of, and their involvement in decisions about non-pharmaceutical interventions for reducing their pre-operative anxiety. This paper investigates elective surgical patients’ involvement in treatment decisions with the aim of finding out their preferred non-pharmaceutical pre-operative anxiety reduction interventions before they undergo elective surgery. Method: A survey method was used to collect data on patients’ preference of non-pharmaceutical preoperative anxiety reduction interventions at a tertiary health facility in Nigeria. Participants: A sample of 30 participants-17 male and 13 female, schedule to undergo surgical operations was selected using a convenient sampling method. Their ages range between 17 to 70 years (mean age = 41.03 and standard deviation = 16.09). Study design/procedure: To elicit preference of interventions, the study participants were presented with cards that contain picture of surgical patient receiving one of the non-pharmaceutical interventions used in reducing pre-operative anxiety. The pictures were presented one at a time for 30-40 seconds. The researcher then gives the participants a sheet of paper with the different interventions boldly written for the participants to rank order them according to the degree of their preferences. Through this process, data was collected from all the 30 participants. Results: The results obtained were entered into SPSS for analysis. Descriptive statistics, at 95 % confidence was calculated to estimate the percentage, mean, standard deviation and confidence intervals based on the participants’ preference of the interventions. Discussions: The findings were discussed alongside the existing literature and recommendations were offered for clinical practice and further research.
2018-12-01T00:00:00ZHow do consultant radiographers contribute to imaging service delivery and leadership?http://hdl.handle.net/10454/16783
Snaith B, Clarke R, Coates A et al (2019) How do consultant radiographers contribute to imaging service delivery and leadership? British Journal of Healthcare Management. 25(1): 41-47.
Background:
Consultant radiographer numbers remain low despite the ongoing capacity challenges in diagnostic imaging. This is compounded by the limited evidence of how such roles can positively impact on service delivery, particularly in relation to their leadership expectations.
Aims:
To examine the activities undertaken by consultant radiographers; evidence the impact of the roles, and consider whether the roles encompass the four domains of consultant practice.
Method:
Six consultant radiographers employed in a single NHS Trust completed an activity diary over a period of 7 days. Interval sampling every 15 minutes enabled the collection of a large volume of complex data.
Findings:
All consultants worked beyond their contacted hours. The documented activities demonstrate the breadth of the roles and confirmed that the participants were undertaking all four core functions of consultant practice.
Conclusion:
The impact of the roles stretched beyond the local department and organisation to the health system and wider profession.
2019-01-02T00:00:00ZPoint of care creatinine testing in diagnostic imaging: a feasibility study within the outpatient computed tomography settinghttp://hdl.handle.net/10454/16782
Snaith B, Harris MA, Shinkins B et al (2019) Point of care creatinine testing in diagnostic imaging: a feasibility study within the outpatient computed tomography setting. European Journal of Radiology. 112: 82-87.
Introduction:
Although the risks associated with iodinated contrast administration are acknowledged to be very low, screening of kidney function prior to administration is still standard practice in many hospitals. This study has evaluated the feasibility of implementing a screening form in conjunction with point of care (PoC) creatinine testing as a method to manage the risks of post contrast acute kidney injury (PC-AKI) within the CT imaging pathway.
Method:
Over an eight-week period 300 adult outpatients attending a UK CT department for contrast-enhanced scans were approached. Participants completed a screening questionnaire for co-morbidities linked to kidney dysfunction and consented to have a PoC and laboratory creatinine tests. Comparison was made against with previous baseline blood tests obtained within the preceding 3 months, as required by the study site. Participants were also invited to attend for follow up PoC and laboratory bloods tests at 48–72 h.
Results:
14 patients (4.7%) had a scan-day eGFR below 45mL/min/1.73m2, all identified through screening. The majority of patients (n=281/300; 93.7%) fell in the same risk category based on previous and scan-day blood results. Six PoC test failures were recorded on the scan day. The constant error between the Abbott i-STAT PoC scan-day measurements and the laboratory scan-day measurements was -3.71 (95% CI: -6.41 to -0.50). Five patients had an elevated creatinine (≥25% from baseline) post contrast administration, but no instances of PC-AKI (≥50% from baseline) were identified.
Conclusion:
PoC creatinine testing is a practical method of ensuring renal function and is feasible in the radiology environment.
2019-03-01T00:00:00ZStandardising the Capture and Processing of Custody Imageshttp://hdl.handle.net/10454/16753
Jilani SK, Ugail H, Cole S and Logan A (2018) Standardising the Capture and Processing of Custody Images. Current Journal of Applied Science and Technology. 30(5): 1-13.
Custody images are a standard feature of everyday Policing and are commonly used during investigative work to establish whether the perpetrator and the suspect are the same. The process of identification relies heavily on the quality of a custody image because a low-quality image may mask identifying features. With an increased demand for high quality facial images and the requirement to integrate biometrics and machine vision technology to the field of face identification, this research presents an innovative image capture and biometric recording system called the Halo.
Halo is a pioneering system which (1) uses machine vision cameras to capture high quality facial images from 8 planes of view (including CCTV simulated), (2) uses high quality video technology to record identification parades and, (3) records biometric data from the face by using a Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) based algorithm, which is a supervised machine learning technique. Results based on our preliminary experiments have concluded a 100% facial recognition rate for layer 34 within the VGG-Face model. These results are significant for the sector of forensic science, especially digital image capture and facial identification as they highlight the importance of image quality and demonstrates the complementing nature a robust machine learning algorithm has on an everyday Policing process.
2018-01-01T00:00:00Z